Tom Middleton heads EPT Barcelona

Thursday, 5 September 2013

Crunch time dawned inside Barcelona's Gran Casino yesterday as an €8,680 bubble loomed large at the start of the day in the EPT's Main Event. With 235 players starting the session and only 183 making the money the action was tense from the start; however, as the field whittled itself down it became the clear the bubble wouldn't be as tumultuous as usual.

The reason many of the short stacks in the room were able to breathe a sigh of relief was the fact that Nuno Da Camara had failed to turn up for the session and his empty chair was no facing elimination.

Despite starting the day with 83,500 chips the Portuguese grinder's stack was slowly devoured and by the time just 184 players were left in contention the invisible grinder was in a critical state.

With the big blind able to force the dead stack all-in a confident Stefan Jedlicka was able to make a move to try and burst the bubble. However, with only a handful of chips himself, the pot odds were just too good for Christopher Andler to ignore so as his opponent revealed pocket aces he casually flipped over 6c 3h.

Andler now had the chance to spoil Jedlicka's day and score a double elimination; however, the odds would prevail as pocket aces stayed comfortably ahead as the board rolled out: 2h 8d Td Qs 2c.

As the surviving players applauded the absent Camara, the pace soon picked up and by the time five levels had come to a conclusion just 79 players were left vying for the title and €1,067,000.

Leading the way with 1,030,000 chips after a healthy upswing was the UK's Tom Middleton who starts today's session ahead of a strong supporting cast which includes: Kevin Vandersmissen (970,000), Niall Farrell (912,000), Thomas Butzhammer (827,000), Andreas Christoforou (825,000).